Mallory is an English surname from the Old French malheure and means "unfortunate" or "unlucky", a nickname that medieval parents clearly did not take too seriously. It took off as an American girls' name in the 1980s, when Mallory Keaton was the teenage daughter on the sitcom Family Ties. Mallory peaked at number 188 in the United States in 2004, dipped in the 2010s and has recovered to number 372 in 2025.